1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print control method in a printing apparatus for printing data stored in a storage device detachably connectable to the printing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
When a meeting is held away from the office, making print-outs in advance and carrying documents necessary for the outside meeting can be cumbersome depending on the content of the document or the number of copies required. A commonly-used method of handling documents in such a case is to store the documents as electronic data in a portable storage device having a nonvolatile storage unit, for example, an USB memory. The storage device can be connected to a printing apparatus such as a multifunction peripheral (MFP) available at a remote location. The electronic data in the storage device is accessed by the printing apparatus (i.e., the printing apparatus reads the data from the storage device) and is printed out.
For example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 08-244314, a host apparatus stores print data in a storage medium (i.e., removable medium) loaded into a disk drive. A printing apparatus then reads the print data stored in the storage medium and performs printing according to the print data.
In the above related art, a printing apparatus at the remote location can print any data stored in a portable storage device when connected to the printing apparatus. This means that even a user (i.e., a visitor) who is not authorized to use (or is not fit to use) a printing apparatus, can print the documents in the printing apparatus if that user has a portable storage device. As a result, a printing apparatus can be freely used or misused which lowers the security level and unnecessarily increases the number of unauthorized print-out.